Aspects of Poverty

Editoriale inglese (tradotto da Silvia Benso)

Abstract

The essays collected in this issue examine two aspects of poverty: the obscure side of indigence and the luminous side of Franciscan poverty. More than a mere editorial choice, the matter is that of an objective complexity of the term “poverty.” It is hard to think that the relation between the two forms of poverty is simple univocity; that is, that the word “poverty” means the same thing in the two cases. Such an affirmation of univocity would amount to placing despair (indigence) and joy (“the highest poverty”) on an equal level. It is easy to think, on the contrary, that the relation between the two senses of “poverty” is simple equivocity; that is, that spiritual poverty has nothing to do with material poverty. It is plausible to think that the two aspects of poverty (its ugliness and beauty) historically enter a relation of analogy, which would be neither pure univocity nor pure equivocity, according to ways that are not easy to define.